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“Treat the earth well: it was not given to you by your parents, it was loaned to you by your children. We do not inherit the Earth from our Ancestors; we borrow it from our Children.”Ancient American Indian Proverb Civilitas successit barbarum Ubi Jus - Ibi Remedium ----> Equity sees that as done what ought to be done Equity will not suffer a wrong to be without a remedy - Equity delights in equality - One who seeks equity must do equity - Equity aids the vigilant, not those who slumber on their rights - Equity imputes an intent to fulfill an obligation - Equity acts in personam - Equity abhors a forfeiture - Equity does not require an idle gesture - He who comes into equity must come with clean hands - Equity delights to do justice and not by halves -Equity will not complete an imperfect gift - Equity will not allow a statute to be used as a cloak for fraud

By recognizing Jerusalem as Israel's capital and moving the US embassy there, President Trump is catering to the US right-wing while risking a new revolt against his Middle East agenda, says journalist and scholar Rami Khouri

As the Israeli crackdown on protests in the Occupied Territories turns deadly, human rights attorney Noura Erakat says that Trump's decision on Jerusalem is only the latest US attack on Palestinian self-determination

transcript SNIPPET:

AARON MATÉ: It's The Real News. I'm Aaron Maté. The uproar continues over President Trump's recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. At least one Palestinian has been killed and dozens have been wounded as Israeli forces crackdown on protests across occupied territories. Protests are also being held around the world and the UN Security Council has held an emergency session. Joining me is Noura Erakat, human rights attorney and professor at George Mason University. Welcome, Noura. As you see this response both in the territories and around the world, your thoughts today?

NOURA ERAKAT: So, two thoughts to start off with: one is that I just want to start by expressing some sort of emotional weight that Palestinians are feeling. This is an incredibly sad moment. In addition to feeling rage and righteous rage, there's a lot of sadness and a heaviness around the fact that this announcement comes around Eid or Christmas for the Christians amongst us and really dampens the mood and the reality that we continue to live under a settler-colonial reality. What President Trump has done is to mark the inevitable consolidation of Israel settler- colonial project that is intent on the elimination of Palestinians as a people and their containment as mere Arabs, as Bedouins, as individuals, as refugees, but not as a people who are deserving of their self-determination.

Palestinians have been waging this struggle for self-determination ever since 1917 when British Empire decided that it would erase Palestinians as a people in order to make way for the establishment of a Jewish national home in their place. This was a colonial decision. It was a colonial erasure. What Netanyahu has said recently in response to Trump is that Trump's announcement about Jerusalem is the equivalent of the Balfour Declaration designating all of Palestine for Jewish settlement. We are seeing a continuity of this colonial process that continues to erase Palestinians, but we're also seeing a continuity in US foreign policy that has steadily, steadily moved forward this project by adopting a dual process of speaking out of both sides of their mouth.

The United States, especially since 1967 under the Lyndon B. Johnson administration has simultaneously told Israel and the world that there will be no resolution, unilateral resolution imposed on the solution either by way of international law or external interference, that it will be completely negotiated resolution. At the same time, the United States has enabled Israel to expand its settler colonial holdings over Palestinian lands without regard to putative borders or otherwise in the form of unequivocal diplomatic aid shielding it from any kind of international censor at the United Nations, in the form of unequivocal military aid that has made Israel the most, the 11th most significant military power in the world but also the only nuclear power in the Middle East, and in the form of financial aid that has ensured Israel will stay afloat and have a remarkably powerful economy on the global scale.

These things together have immunized Israel from any kind of external pressure. Despite the international community insisting that there must be a solution and a just solution to the Palestinian condition, it has been able to act with impunity in order to continue its settler colonial project of erasure, to usher in an era of apartheid under the double-speak of the United States which has now ended as Trump has revealed, has removed the emperor's clothes to reveal US foreign policy for what it is which is as an enabler for Israel's project.

The US had to veto the UN Security Council vote to rebuke the US for moving its embassy to Jerusalem, which would have passed 14-1. All except the US agreed that the embassy's move will make a peace agreement between Israel and Palestine more difficult. Vijay Prashad analyzes the vote

Electoral observers from the OAS are calling for new elections, but they still won't use the word "fraud." Gerardo Torres, international coordinator of the Opposition Alliance Against the Dictatorship, and Luther Castillo, former Vice Minister in the Department of Health, discuss next steps

David Cay Johnston:Trump Is Determined to Provoke War to Draw Focus From Racist and Erratic Behavior

Thursday, January 18, 2018

By Amy Goodman and Nermeen Shaikh, Democracy Now! | Video Interview

SNIPPET:AMY GOODMAN: Well, David Cay Johnston, the Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter, joins us here in our studio, out this week with his new book. It's called It's Even Worse Than You Think: What the Trump Administration Is Doing to America.

Welcome to Democracy Now!, David. You have been covering Donald Trump for over 30 years. You heard what he had to say about it: Look where you are, and look where he is today. But you've also been covering President Trump through this first year. Can you talk about, as we move into the first anniversary of his inauguration, what has surprised you most, since this is a man you have known back to his early days as a developer going bankrupt in New York?

DAVID CAY JOHNSTON: Well, Donald hasn't, frankly, done anything that's surprised me. And I said, and there's lots of video of me saying, before the election, he would be increasingly erratic, his racism would come out, that he would try to find an excuse to use nuclear weapons, because during the campaign, he said, "I'm very good at war. I know more about ISIS than the generals. And of course we're going to use nukes." And, lo and behold, last week, the news breaks that they are loosening up the rules on the use of tactical nuclear weapons -- that is, a nuclear weapon that will take out a block, not a city -- and possibly even authorizing their use for a cyberattack. He's looking for --

AMY GOODMAN: I mean, this is amazing. I mean, just to reiterate this --

DAVID CAY JOHNSTON: Oh, it is.

AMY GOODMAN: -- using nuclear weapon attack for a cyberattack.

DAVID CAY JOHNSTON: Right. And hopefully, the military will not follow an order to do this. But clearly, he is determined, if he can figure out how to do it, to provoke a war. After all, what helps strengthen your position if you're a dictator-in-waiting, which is what Donald is, but some kind of incident that will stir the public and focus people away from his crazy, racist, uninformed, ignorant behavior?

The following POS POTUS would rather start a nuclear war that kills billions of humans and destroys most of the biosphere rather than admit he is a fascist polluter defending crook, a racist and a fake billionare (YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED):

Donald Trump just revealed that he wants to bring the country together likely through a new major war! Will a war distract from the Nunes memo release? Will the United States face off against North Korea or Iran or both?

Days ago, Brandon sent along some thoughts that he’d like to share with you. “I know a lot of us look at the world today and we despair,” he wrote. “We see corporations consuming our resources at an exponential rate to sell us meaningless trinkets and distract us while our planet is dying. The leaders that we have voted into office are slaves to money and are not servants of the people that they represent. And we live our lives in relative safetybuilt off the bloodshed and misery of those that the mainstream media would say are different than us and whom we need to fear.”

Brandon went on: “I'm sorry to say that nothing will save us from this mess but ourselves. The world scenario notwithstanding, I'm not here to smash your hearts, minds, and spirits against the face of the reality that we have set before us. I'm here to remind us to carry with us a little bit of hope.

“I served in the military for eight years, six of those for the USAF Intelligence apparatus that mutated into the drone program that we see today. And even though through Trump's🦀 administration we see more killings of civilians from the air in Iraq and Syria in the first year of his administration than the entire Obama administration combined, we can also see that this comes from the elites’ desperation to hold on to whatever scraps of power that they can through fear and intimidation.”[1]

As someone in the military’s drone program, Brandon was always under orders. As a whistleblower, he says, “I think that I have done a good job in setting the example of somebody who has made grievous mistakes out of foolishness and naivety, has taken responsibility for my own faults in my own actions, 🕊 and has decided to do something about it.And with the legitimacy that I have gained, through the madness and the grief, I offer my voice and actions once again to step into the arena and face the monsters of humanity as myself. I have nothing to offer but myself. I think that's enough.”

In a show of unity, athletes from North and South Korea marched at the Winter Olympics' Opening Ceremony under the same flag. But the Trump administration is doing its best to thwart hopes for peace on the peninsula, says Christine Ahn of Women Cross DMZ